Klemzig Platers - cawpba.com

The Classic Australian Wooden

Power Boat Association

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Editor’s Note:

Summer is well on the way now and I dare say everyone is gearing up for the boating season. Unfortunately, I won’t be around for much of it this year as I will dealing with a European winter.

I would like to thank everyone for your support and wish you all a pleasant and safe boating season.

Remember, please keep talking to me …. Greg Carr

I have received a number of enquiries from people who have been members of

the CAWPB Association for over 12 months asking when they are going to receive a Membership Renewal Form. The answer to that question is right now.

I have held off for as long as I could with renewals, making sure that the CAWPBA was going to continue to gain in strength and not be just be a flash in the pan.

The Association is doing well, with numbers continuing to increase slowly but surely. Because of this, I am confident that we are here for the long run and therefore, to maintain the bank balance which pays for postage, newsletter production and other incidentals, anyone who became a member prior to January 2002 will be asked to renew their subscription. For those who joined after January 2002, your membership will expire in January 2004.Membership will then be by calendar year, with renewal each January. Those affected now will find a membership renewal form with this newsletter.

If you wish to renew your membership, please complete the form and return it with a cheque or Money Order for $20.00.

Financial members on 01/09/02

Victoria 36

New South Wales 20

Queensland 5

Tasmania 3

South Australia 3

West Australia 2

Total 69

Association Finance

We have $530.00 in the bank (less the costs of this newsletter). I will produce a Income/Expense statement in the next issue.

Membership Renewal

Postal Address: 18 Grandview St Moonee Ponds

Vic 3039

Phone: 03 9370 2987 E-mail: [email protected]

Association Statistics

Klemzig Platers

Paul Siddall Mobile: 0419 826 377

Bright Chrome

Satin Chrome

Nickel Plating

Metal Polishing

Paint stripping

Exhaust Tip Manufacturers Motor Cycle & Car Parts Specialists

294 North East Rd Klemzig SA 5087 Ph: (08) 8261 1168

January 2003 • National Maritime Festival, Newcas-

tle, NSW, January 18th & 19th. February 2003 • The Melbourne Wooden Boat Festival,

Docklands, February 1st & 2nd. • The Australian Wooden Boat Festival,

Hobart, Tasmania, February 7th - 10th. March 2003 • The South Australian Wooden Boat

Festival, Goolwa, South Australia, March 14, 15 & 16.

Contact your local rep for details on the above events.

Please check for confirmation of dates and venues

Coming Events The South Australian Wooden Speedboat Club

For further information, contact Paul Siddall by phone on: 08 8520 3651 or 0419 826 377 or by e-mail at: [email protected] The Victorian Wooden Speedboat Club

For further information, contact Greg Carr by phone on: 03 9370 2987 or 0408 937 029 or by e-mail at: [email protected] The New South Wales Wooden Speedboat Club

For further information, contact Dave Pagano by phone on: 02 4578 4444 (after hours) or by e-mail at: [email protected]

Club Contact Details The Queensland Wooden Speedboat Club For further information, contact Chris Lawrence by phone on: 07 5594 2517 or via e-mail at: [email protected] The Tasmanian Wooden Speedboat Club For further information, contact Alan Mansfield by phone on: 03 64 282290 or email at: [email protected]

The Classic Australian Wooden Power Boat Association For general information, contact Greg Carr by phone on: 03 9370 2987 or 0408 937 029 or by e-mail at: [email protected] or write to the address at the top left of this page.

The Classic Australian Wooden Power Boat Association

B eing winter, it has understandably been

fairly quiet on the classic boat scene over the past few months. Undoubtedly, this will soon change with the warmer weather.

There are a couple of impor-tant events coming up next year that offer the classic boat owner an opportunity to participate.

The first of these events is the proposed first Melbourne Wooden Boat Festival, to be held in early February 2003. The festival will be held in conjunction with the BIA (Vic) Summer Boat Festival, so will have a bit of plastic about. It is important that we really get behind this event and support it well. We need to establish ourselves as an important part of the wooden boat scene, so the more boats we get there the better. We all know the public love old

speedboats, so let’s show them some.

The second event, in March, is the South Australian Wooden Boat Festival at Goolwa. This event was well supported in 2001 and turned out to be an excellent week-end. What set this festival apart was when the boats hit the water for the “drive past”. The crowd loved it, as

did the boat owners. This is not a show to be missed.

Both these festivals are a relatively easy drive for in-terstate participants and I would encourage you all to take part. As well as being interesting and informative, they really are good fun as well.

See you there.

Bon Voyage

I n very early November I will be heading overseas,

working in France for about six months, with a brief re-turn to Australia in late Janu-ary for a few weeks. It’s really going to be tough over there, I can tell you.

As for Club matters, I will keep in contact via the inter-net and will continue to pro-duce the newsletter from

overseas. It will be printed and mailed out in Australia.

Club membership enquiries and other club functions will be redirected to other mem-bers in Australia.

Hopefully I will be able to have a look at the local club scene in Europe as well as having a look at a couple of boat museums. Two “must see” museums are the Riva

Museum in Italy as well as Steamboat Museum in Win-demere in the Lake District of northern England. This museum has a very good collection of old race boats.

I hope to make it back for the first Melbourne Wooden Boat Festival in February and Goolwa might even be a possibility.

Au Revoir!

Important Events 1

Bon Voyage 1

Boat Profile - Sabre 2

Bulletin Board - Ads 2

Stardust 2

The 2002 Melbourne Boat Show

3

Carol Lee 3

How To Set Up An Inboard Runabaout Part II

4

Mystress - Restoration and Conversion

6

Membership Renewal

8

Statistics 8

Coming Events 8

Inside this issue:

Important Events

THE HOLLOW LOG October 2002 Volume 2 Issue 4

Interested in advertising in this publication? Contact 03 9370 2987 Articles in this publication may not be reproduced without the permission of the publisher and/or writer

Grant Webster’s runabout. Gotta love that name!

I was contacted recently by Leigh Falcke of Melbourne. Leigh had ap-

plied for club membership and in the email mentioned his boat Sabre.

Sabre was built by Col Winton in around 1959 for a member of the Victo-rian Speed Boat Club. The boat was to be raced on Melbourne’s Albert Park Lake, carrying the registration number VS68. After being delivered “raw”, the new owner spent the next 11 years (part time) fitting the boat out and bringing it to the finish that it has to this day.

After all his work, the boat was then sold to another member of the VSBC. This member then stored the boat for the next 31 years!

So, what do we have here? A boat that

was built 42 years ago and is as perfect today as the day it was built. This hull has never been in the wa-ter.

The hull has been set up to take a Y Block Ford, but

the engine was never fitted. Everything is there ready for one to drop in.

No instruments have been fitted.

Of course, Leigh’s dilemma now is does he fit an engine and “christen” the boat, or does he leave it as it is and retain the boat’s absolute originality?

Some dilemma, huh?

S tardust was built in the early 1950’s for its

Adelaide owner.

The 24 foot long triple cockpit was available for cruises. The fee was 2/- (that’s 2 shillings for those who can’t re-member).

And yes, the tow car is a Jaguar XK120!

T hose of us that frequent the website BB know of the frustration when

dealing with all the “Pop-Ups” - you know, all those annoying ads that keep appearing. I have had many people com-plain about them, saying it puts them off using the Board.

In response to the above, we are having a t h r e e m o n t h t r i a l o f a n “Advertisement” free Bulletin Board.

Let us know what you think - will it be worth the $A100.00 per annum cost or not?

Sabre

Bulletin Board - Ads

THE HOLLOW LOG

Deck appears to be silver ash. Centre stipe is red with deck edging in black.

All Leigh has done to the boat is polish it.

Hull colour is . . . red. Paintwork is unmarked.

Stardust

Page 7 THE HOLLOW LOG

plete, the fitting of the prop shaft and drive train could begin. The only way to get a decent amount of passenger space in this boat was to fit a V-Drive and have a compact rear mounted engine. The V-Drive fits nicely behind the driver’s seat and allows for a prop shaft angle of 11 degrees. Getting a 2 inch hole at an angle of 11 degrees through an 80 mm thick keel was fun though….

With that out of the way, it was time to fill in that gaping hole where the out-board used to be. I Installed a couple of ribs matching the curve of the transom and made a giant plywood plug that could be installed flush with the tran-som. The whole transom was then re-laminated with Red Cedar. The gaping hole in the deck was filled nicely with a hatch, which conveniently became the

engine hatch. This was made from ply-wood and laminated to match the deck.

Next came the engine. This was a tough choice as there were many factors to take into account; size, weight, sound, price and parts availability among them. Tradition dictates that this sort of boat deserves a V-8 of some flavour. How-ever, not being one to stand on tradition, I had to rule this option out rather early due to both the size and weight of the beasts. Sure, it would be nice to have a bazillion Nm’s of torque, but when the hull weighs less than 200 kg and the completed boat under 600kg, it probably isn’t necessary. The final choice was between Subaru’s mighty Impreza WRX

engine and the 13B turbo from Mazda’s RX-7. Both of these engines would have physically fitted into the space I had al-lowed, and both have been highly developed for p e r f o r m a n c e applications. In the end however I decided on the rotary engine due to complica-tions with ex-haust design on the four pot engine.

I picked up a worn out 13B turbo from a Jap engine importer for the initial fitting. This allowed me to make sure everything fitted and design all the engine mounts, brackets, plumbing, etc before lashing out on the real thing. The 13B turned out to be a beautiful fit. The only major problems were: having to mod-ify the original inlet manifold to fit under the deck, and making a water to air inter-

cooler for the turbo. The inlet manifold turned out to be more time-consuming than difficult. I ended up cutting it in half and making a new plenum chamber on the top of it. I tossed the ludicrously com-plex factory throttle body and opted for an XF Falcon unit. The end result is very neat and compact indeed. The entire vertical height of the engine is less than 60cm. Not bad for something capable of

producing an easy 300 hp. The inter-cooler will initially be the factory air-to-air intercooler encased in aluminium to convert it for water cooling use. The higher heat capacity of water will actu-ally make it much more efficient than the original unit. A definite unplanned bonus! Once everything is up and run-ning though, the plan is to replace it with a custom unit. Custom engine mounts were fabricated out of 10mm aluminium plate and they definitely look the part.

Well, two and a half years after buying the boat, I’m getting pretty close to get-ting it wet again. I originally though it would take me about 8 months to com-plete. The word naive comes to mind….

Still remaining is: final sanding and coating of the hull with two more layers

continued on page 5

THE HOLLOW LOG

best of all worlds. The second was to try to manufacture, rather than purchase, as much of the fit-out as possible. Making

things is definitely a hobby of mine and what more stylish object is there to make than a wooden boat

T he unnamed boat was purchased as a bare hull from the builder, Ken

Blacklock, in January 2000. I towed it down from the Gold Coast on a car trailer, as the purchase price didn’t in-clude one. I’d first seen the boat a cou-ple of years earlier in an issue of Power-boat magazine (pictured right). It was built as the demonstrator model for the series of boats and kits that Ken was making at the time. The boat had previ-ously been loaned to a movie studio for use in shooting a movie or series (nothing famous I suspect). In order to

make it suit their purpose, they coated it with a tacky brown substance (designed specifically for clogging sanding discs) to make it look old. The end result was a boat which looked very far from pris-tine. The hull itself was actually de-signed to take an outboard, so my main task was to convert it to an inboard setup.

So, with my boat building experience at the time amounting to approximately bugger all, the project commenced in earnest. I spent many nights and many beers standing around the empty hull, just looking at it and thinking about how I should approach it all. I set myself a couple of challenges with this project. The first was to retain a level of interior space similar to when it was powered by the outboard. This is a fairly tall order in a 16 ft hull, but if you’re going to design the entire interior and mechanical lay-out, you might as well try and get the

I made a trailer for it so I could lug the thing around, mainly taking it to people and asking stupid questions. The first thing to be fitted was the rudder. Due to the style of the transom, the rudder had to be mounted internally. This also helps to maintain the clean, smooth lines and will allow the fitment of a proper board-ing platform (If I ever get around to it). The outboard steering system was adapted to work on the tiller. This meant making a couple of aluminium brackets and steering pulleys to reverse the direc-tion of travel, but the end result is still very neat. I welded up the brackets while doing a TAFE course in TIG welding. TAFE instructors are very helpful, and their attitude to student pro-jects seems very enthusiastic. I have since been using the TAFE to manufac-ture many custom components from both aluminium and stainless steel, all whilst honing my welding skills.

Once the rudder installation was com-

Mystress — Conversion and Restoration Neil Blythe

I last saw this boat in Graham Howard’s work shop a couple of years ago and its size makes it a very impressive boat. I dare say it will make the Americans sit up and want to have a good look at this unique style of race boat from down under.

I have asked Ken to keep me posted as he travels the boat show circuit.

T he former Victorian Lewis skiff, Carol Lee, has surfaced in the USA

in the hands of world water speed record holder, Ken Warby.

Carol Lee, running a single overhead cam 427 ci Ford, was raced in Australia in the 1970’s . At 19ft 6ins long, it is believed to be the longest skiff built by Lewis. Ken has fitted the blown 502ci Chev out of his hydro, "Aussie Spirit".

Based in Cincinnati, Ohio, Ken can do quite a number of Wooden Boat Shows with the boat each year in the USA.

Carol Lee

Volume 2 Issue 4

T he Australian Classic Wooden Boat Association was invited to put on a

display of classic wooden speed boats at the 2002 Melbourne Boat Show in July. Ever willing to oblige and ever so keen to get some publicity for the Associa-tion, we had four boats displayed this year. Boats on show were Pearl Neck-lace, Tusk, Electric Girl and Stormy. The Boat Show organisers were very generous with floor space, allocating us a length of 31 metres to use. We could have had another three or even four boats on show, but the four there suf-ficed. Next year we will look at squeez-ing in many more. Interest in the boats and the Association was again very encouraging, although probably down a bit on last year. All the same, we had some excellent

discussions with ex wooden boat racers/owners.

One gent, who would have been around 80 years of age, spoke of winning the West-wood Tro-phy for 266ci side valves in his Eddy h u l l , R o c c o .

Rocco was previously known as Si-rocco. Electric Girl was popular again, with many people recognising it from its rac-ing days. One person remembered ski-ing behind it and spoke of it being a sister boat to Alan Fordham’s Venus. Apparently Fordham continued to de-velop Venus while Bob Bell decided to develop his business instead of the boat. Several members dropped by with many offering to assist by manning the stand. Thanks to all of you, and special thanks to Keith Laws who manned the stand every day bar one.

The 2002 Melbourne Boat Show

M elodee’s t u r n i n g

circle is im-proved by the fitting of a small fin well aft on the port-side (Pic 4). This small fin which a lso helps guide the boat to its place on the trailer, digs in on tight turns and helps to hold the stern on line against the throw of the turn which would tend to slide it outward.

The motor used in any boat is up to the user. It could be an old side basher Ford or a con-verted four cyl-inder car en-

HOW TO SET UP AN INBOARD RUNABOUT PART 2

THE HOLLOW LOG

5

6

members are bent to accept the shaft and rudder, while forward, the keel slides into a po-sitioning groove.

A steel position-ing frame is sited so that it guides the bow home while the welded knobs on this frame carry he recovery rope. The trailer has platforms forward and aft to allow recov-ery without the driver getting soaked.

Inboard runabouts are rarely fussy inter-nally. The “office” in Melodee is almost spartan (Pic 8). It has a full range of instruments but no speedometer. The Warner eight grand tacho is redlined at seven! Foot throttle is the only way to control revs in hot boats as this leaves

the driver’s hands where he needs them - on the wheel. Left pedal is for bracing the driver.

This insight into one of Australia’s top boats should help you set up your run-

gine. Melodee uses a 293 ci Chev with two four barrel Carter AFB carburettors (Pic 5). This provides much more urge than the average inboard could use.

At speed, (Pic 6), Melodee sits flat and level. This indicates that the cavitation plate is set up correctly. The small fin

below the hull provides forward stability when the boat is tossing and aids in cor-nering.

Melodee’s home built trailer shows lots of thought (Pic 7). The cross frame

about better. It can be a frustrating job to the uninitiated. It can also be very re-warding.

You may not want to do 80 mph and you may never race your boat, but it’s a fair bet that once you have made your boat go well you’ll want to find out just how well. Then the racing bug bites.

Some of Melodee’s go-fast features may apply to your boat and by comparing your boat with the country’s best you are bound to find something to make your boat go better. And most of the bits can be bought over the counter these days.

Reproduced from SEACRAFT, No-vember 1971

Page 5 THE HOLLOW LOG

7

8

Quote for Today: “Professionals built the Titanic,

amateurs built the Ark”

Mystress cont’d of epoxy, before being sent away to be sprayed with a coating of polyurethane.

The Gelcoat on the bottom of the hull also needs either repairing or completely redone (any recommendations or sug-gestions here would be gratefully ac-cepted). Oh yeah, and the rear seat… oh well, who cares about passengers any-way!

All going well, hopefully she will hit the water late this year. Hope to see you all out there!

A BAD race day!

Klemzig Platers - cawpba.com

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